Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday March 12, 2015 @07:46AM
from the as-it-ever-was dept.

Raging Bool writes According to the BBC News website, the BBC is returning to producing comparatively inexpensive computers for schools. Readers of sufficient age will remember the BBC Model B with great affection. But won't this be in competition with other pre-existing devices such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi? The BBC says not: "The BBC does not see Micro Bit as a rival to similar devices such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Galileo and Kano, but rather hopes it will act as a 'springboard' to these more complex machines." I hope they're at least consulting with Eben Upton.

Actually it was Acorn Computers that made the BBC model B. They went on to make a RISC processor, ARM, the most successful processor sold by unit volume. The one in your smartphone and TV box and car and Raid and router and and and and....

All possible because the BBC decided to pump money into a computer back in the 80's when the computer industry was a hobby.

Yes, but the BBC Micro was licensed and heavily promoted via the BBC, and Acorn brought their demo system to a meeting with the BBC to win the manufacturing contract. The BBC controlled the specification of the computer, so they were (in the movie sense of the term) the producer. Acorn were a very gifted art department.

Acorn, followed and ARM would not be where they were and are today if they had not managed to win that BBC contract.

that's a load. It's far more likely that the price was hiked because more people were buying it than expected. For its time it was the dog's bollocks of home computers, the keyboard was definitely built to last - unlike the membrane board on the ZX81 which would short and stick if you blew on it wrong. OK so it was thrice the price of the ZX81, but hell, it was worth all those washed cars.

I have to add that I never saw a BBC computer for sale in the US at all. Sinclair's where around but the kings where the C64, the Atari, and a few Apples for the people that had the money or where really into the Computers.

Yeah, I heard they tried marketing it in the US, but it wasn't a major success. The BBC's main success here was in schools, and AFAIK the Apple II was one of the biggest sellers for that purpose over there; possibly it was already established by the time the BBC came out.

It should also be noted that the reverse is also true to some extent- while the Apple II was far from unknown over here (my Dad had one of the later ones at work), it was never (AFAICT) as prominent as it was in the US. Possibly because t

It's far more likely that the price was hiked because more people were buying it than expected.

Two ways of saying the same thing. Match demand to the supply. The waiting list was a couple of months or so at the time as I recall, and Acorn were having cash flow problems increasing production so dampening demand whilst upping the revenue was a sensible decision.

Surprised the contract with the BBC was flexible enough to let them do it though.

The BBC Micro also integrated with the BBC's CEEFAX teletext service, if equipped with the relevant add-on adaptor. The Model B's mode 7 graphics were a full implementation of the then teletext graphics standard.
Not only could the BBC Micro then display standard CEEFAX pages, but the BBC also broadcast other content specifically for use with this adaptor, under what was known as Telesoftware. This content was mainly BASIC applications, some of which tied in with the BBC's own TV shows for schools, but the

Outside the U.K. the BBC-B didn't draw that much attention though, mostly due to the price tag. Agreed, it was a solid computer, rugged enough to be placed in, say, a class room. In the Netherlands, the Philips P2000 was used for that mostly http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org] . Admittingly the BBC-B was more solid and had a better keyboard, but no fancies like internal disk or cassette drive - one of the great features of those Philips computers. Hop along, put in personal cassette and within a minute (or 3)

No-one i know possessed a BBC-B. We all heard of it's famous RISC processor though, as the Acorn guy could proudly tell about all it's advantages over our inferior Z80's and 6502's.

Just to clarify - the BBC B did not have a RISC processor. It had a 2 MHz 6502, although it did make incredible use of its power.

One of the nicest features of the BBC B was its wealth of hardware interfaces, including what was called The Tube which allowed the connection of additional processors. You could add a second 6502, or a Z80, or even in the latter days, an ARM.

Acorn were very late in moving on from the 8-bit 6502, toying for a while with the 32016/16032, but eventually deciding to design their ow

The BBC Micro was the best 8-bit micro ever, but the price was very expensive (it was sort of the UK equivalent of Apple I guess, except it was *far* better than the Apple II). I'm not sure about the wisdom of internal floppy drives and cassette tape mechanisms - makes them tougher to replace if anything goes wrong with them. The BBC Micro needed a disk interface chip adding, but once that's done, any sort of external floppy drive could be used.

They might mean 'complex' in the sense that an arduous isn't going to do much without access to a real computer with the dev tools installed; and won't do much that is visible without some basic electrical bodging to connect LEDs and switches or the like. Based on the photos, it looks like they went for something that includes some rudimentary display capabilities by default and may even be modestly programmable without hooking it up to a full PC. That would arguably make it 'less complex' in terms of inte

I reckon an Arduino-alike. Possibly something as simple as other low-end ATMega or ATTiny werables like Adafruit Trinket, Flora or even Adafruit Gemma, only with a 5x5 LED array and two switches built-in.

In some respects, these things are even less powerful than the original BBC Model B; 8k of flash & 0.5k of RAM on the Trinket compared to 32k of RAM on the Beeb. In other respects, they're a little bit more powerful; 8MHz or 16MHz R

I can understand the desire to jump into hardware when what you want is currently unavailable(while it arguably failed, the OLPC XO was something that simply wasn't available for purchase until they showed that they were serious about being willing to build them. It was mostly eclipsed by commercial offerings not too much later; but at the time there wasn't anything quite like it, certainly not for the price); but 'relatively friendly intro dev boards' isn't really a category that currently feels neglected. If anything, it is booming. What is the incentive for the BBC to spin yet-another-slightly-different board, rather than glom on to the existing product or product family closest to their needs and focus on a combination of curriculum/documentation and tool chain polish to ensure smooth use in education, even when the teacher isn't a microcontroller geek?

The reason that kids of my age were "into computers" and we had a "great generation" of bedroom programmers who subsequently became tech workers was because simple, programmable computers were one of the few forms of entertainment available to the kids who didn't want to go out and kick a ball around or ride their bike.

This was an era when

* Things were more expensive (the toys cost.. about what they do, in numbers, these days. Only inflation means that £30 is not even 10 pints of beer for dad these days when it was more like 60 pints of beer back then.) A £200 home computer was a MAJOR expense rather than an impulse buy.* There was an hour of kids TV on weekdays

I saw a great article that explained that the no.1 quality a programmer needs is persistence - in the face of ridiculous odds of getting even simple things to work.

Back then you persevered with things because the only other thing to do was go and watch Coronation Street with mother, or re-read one of the few books you could afford this month. Even deciding to start playing a game wasn't exactly an impulse choice because to load it took about 5 minutes (from audio cassette tape).

Producing more simple, programmable computers these days is missing the point, although they are greatly appreciated by folks from that great generation of bedroom programmers who like a new toy to tinker with.

I very fondly remember my trips to the public library with Mum (a lot of the time I would bring back these excellent Usborne programming books [mocagh.org]).

But you had a 3 book limit (and Mum was usually kind enough to let me get something on her card as well). I'd go through that very quickly. When the library is a 40-minute round trip on foot (and you're not allowed to ride on main roads on your bike by your parents), that's a major investment of time. Faced wi

"This is exactly what the BBC is all about - bringing the industry together on an unprecedented scale and making a difference to millions,"

Really? It's the job of a public broadcasting organization financed largely by mandatory TV and Internet license fees to give away a million embedded systems, most of which will simply gather dust or blink a few times, on the theory that programming will continue to be a lucrative profession 20 years down the road?

The BBC Micro was a phenomenal success in the 1980s. And I don't mean just in terms of sales, I mean in terms of priming the pumps for computer literacy. The BBC Micro, in combination with the TV programmes, and it's classroom ruggedness was vital. The ZX Spectrum was seldom used for anything but playing poor quality games in kids bedrooms.

Well, that's not a good relative measure. After all, plenty of countries managed to avoid computer illiteracy without the BBC, television license fees, or subsidies. The question is: what did the BBC subsidy demonstrably accomplish relative to simply letting the market take care of computer literacy?

Is this grumpy pointless question time?

No, I simply do not understand your justification. Should the BBC send out free cooking spoons for its cooking shows? Free musical instruments for mu

I'm sorry I'm not the slightest bit interested in the BBC having to justify their actions. I lived through it, and it was a wonderful thing. That's good enough for me. Actually more than good enough for me, that BBC Micro started me off into my career.

And the reason for your left wing positions is because you're too lazy and self-important to help other people yourself; so much easier to just take a superior political position and vote that other people's money take care of problems, real or imagined.

"The BBC does not see Micro Bit as a rival to... Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Galileo and Kano, but rather hopes it will act as a "springboard" to these more complex machines....it will be compatible with three coding languages - Touch Develop, Python and C++.

It has a C++ compiler but is not complex? Seriously, intoducing kids to coding using C++? Things like the RPi don't need a springboard to reach them anyway. All these things can be used as simple as you like or as complex as you like. What OS is this thing using anyway?

the BBC is being careful not to repeat the mistakes of the BBC Microcomputer launch, which angered rivals such as Sinclair

Why was "angering" Sinclair a "mistake"? He was just another micro manufacturer so was hardly to be expected to welcome a new rival. Couldn't they have told him to f#@k off?

the BBC is working with several partners, including chip-designer Arm, Microsoft and Samsung, to get the end product right.

Not tax funded. It is funded by the TV licence fee, a different thing.

then shafted every other business in that home computing field by adding their name to the product and taking a cut of the profits... thus decimating the choice of computers available to them by reducing competition by heavily favouring one particular computer.

What BS - sounds like you are airing a pet issue . Were you in the UK at that time? I was, and the BBC micro cetainly did not "shaft" every or any other business. Amstrad and Sinclair computers were much more popular. I only knew one person who bought a BBC micro, he was middle-aged and bought it second-hand. The BBC micros had the image of being geared to education and wee thus rather boring.

It wasn't just that they were geared towards education, they were geared specifically to schools.

Firstly they were built like a brick shithouse. 8mm thick ABS casing and a monitor that came in 3mm steel plate. Proper key switches (none of that rubber nastiness) with individual, replacable keys. Those things were nearly indestructable.

Lots of I/O options so they could be hooked up to other hardware. My school had a BBC with not only a LOGO ROM, but a real LOGO turtle which trundled around the floor and drew

22. Since our last report there has been a significant change in the position of the licence fee. In January 2006 the Office of National Statistics re-classified the licence fee as a tax. Previously, this payment had been classified in the National Accounts as a service charge. Explaining the change the Office of National Statistics (ONS) says “in line with the definition of a tax, the licence fee

"The upshot is that enforcement is now in the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system, rather than the civil system."

No it's not. License fee evasion is still dealt with entirely in the civil justice system. I doubt the BBC would even want it reclassified because it'd require a higher standard of evidence for a criminal trial than for a civil trial and that'd massively increase the cost to them of enforcement. Right now they can win trials by knocking up shoddy, and frankly unacceptably poor standards o

no, the licence fee funds the BBC only. The others are funded by advertising revenue. Licence fee evasion has been a criminal matter since April 2007. iPlayer and the BBC website are both funded by the commercial arm of the BBC (BBC Worldwide).

That doesn't even make any sense, all BBC funded content is funded under the TV break down (~Â£2.2bn) because there's next to no iPlayer only content, it's just content already shown on TV. The online break down of ~Â£170m is for the BBC websites. Also, not all iPlayer content is fee funded, a number of iPlayer programs are supplied by BBC Worldwide and produced for foreign commercial sale, sometimes alongside other foreign organisations like America's Discovery Channel.

Erm, why are you even having this discussion if you believe that ITV has it's own private terrestrial broadcast infrastructure? You're completely out of your depth here. ITV, Channel 5, and Channel 4 are broadcast on the public service multiplexes, along with a bunch of radio stations, the funding for which is provided from the license fee under the transmission costs.

If the license fee has nothing to do with public infrastructure costs, why do you think hundreds of millions of pounds of license fee money h

Well at least you have the courage to admit you were wrong in a roundabout way involving trying to pretend someone else was wrong. I guess it was the old BDUK point that was the killer right? I mean it's kind of hard to argue that the license fee isn't used for infrastructure when, er, it clearly and indisputably is.

I know what you really mean is "I wont argue with you because you've proven me wrong, but I'm too much of a child to admit it so fuck you!".

What? Shouldn't we get competent people within their area of expertise do that? Isn't the BBS owned by the British government? Don't they have to explain their expenses and stay within their charter? AKA We give you X million a year to produce good British programming, not run amusement parts or build condominiums.

The BBC is not a news agency, it is a public broadcaster which has a charter it must abide by. It is not owned by the British Government. According to its charter, it has 6 public purposes:

1. Sustaining citizenship and civil society

2. Promoting education and learning

3. Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence

4. Representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities

5. Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK

6. Delivering to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services

This initiative falls squarely under #2 (and arguably under #6), similar to how the BBC helped popularise home computers in the 1980s, which as a nice side-benefit created the ARM processor and raked in all sorts of money for the UK government.

You might want to understand what's being discussed before getting all internet-outrage-y and demonstrating your ignorance on the topic;)

24. Reclassification of the licence fee as a tax also has the consequence that the BBC is reclassified from the public non-financial corporations sub-sector tothe central government sector. The status of the BBC is thus also affected by this decision and it becomes a central government body. This change alsoaffects the Welsh broadcaster S4C.

This is why I've only ever bought two computer systems in my entire life. First one was a BBC Model B back in the 80's, the second one was a laptop in 2011. All my other systems are parts cobbled together with spit and hair. All of them get used until they catch fire.

And when they did this with the BBC Computer it gave a big boost to Acorn Computers, which probably helped them getting into developing the ARM CPU. And ARM has repaid that initial BBC investment many times over.

It's strange hearing you praising education, when you continue to labour under the false impression that fundamentalists of a certain flavour represent the moderates of the same flavour, even though that's been pointed out to you time and time and time again. I guess you're happy with that nonsense as it makes you feel in control somehow, so you let it slide. You are either a lazy human being, a scared human being, or an ignorant human being. Pick at least one, please.

Then I should read the bible and come to the conclusion that all Christians are slave-owning monsters killing people to sate the desires of a perverted God who loves to force people into horrific situations for his own vanity? See how that works?